Slam!

“But when he shows you a painting he can make you see things in it that you wouldn’t notice if you just looked at it yourself.”

Slam is talking about his art history teacher. He likes this teacher because he feels like the teacher makes him see things he didn’t know were there. While this teacher doesn’t play a significant role in the story, this quote is important because the same can be said of Slam: Throughout the novel, Slam feels that people around him—at Latimer, in his neighborhood—only see him in one-dimensional ways, as just a basketball player, or as a future corner guy, another one of “Harlem’s dead.” However, Slam feels, and knows, there is much more depth to him, and throughout the story he will figure out how to make his internal depth more visible.

“I don’t know, but it seemed that Ice was getting harder. That’s the way I figured things had to be. You live in the hood and either you get hard or get wasted.” 

Ice has just been introduced to the reader, and Slam has been thinking about the connection the two of them share—they’ve grown up together, played ball together, and seen a lot happen in the neighborhood. However, here Slam begins to notice a particular hardness to Ice, a coldness that has developed in him that Slam has seen in other neighborhood men, and his attitude about “get[ting] hard or get[ting] wasted” reveals the way many young men in their neighborhood feel about expressing masculinity: Only the strong survive, and being able to survive in their life means being hard and unfeeling.

“‘And I’d bet two Roosevelt dimes that nobody else cares—maybe excepting your mama and that’s cause she still thinks it’s her job—because it ain’t their lives. It’s your life, do you care?’”

In the hospital, Slam’s grandmother, Ellie, shoots straight with him by offering some tough but wise advice. She tells him that he’s old enough now to be in control of his own life and decisions and that his mom won’t always be there to help him. Slam’s life is his own, and he has to care about it because in the end it’s no one else’s responsibility.

“I didn’t need people talking about me like I was some kind of thing they was studying in science. A thing, and not even a person. They were talking about me like I was nothing.”

Mr. Tate, Latimer’s principal, is trying to help Slam by offering him tutoring, but Slam feels like he’s just a project, a display, something to be looked at and fixed. Instead of working through these feelings, he gets defensive and rejects the help, a habit that he repeats throughout the novel.

“Maybe he thinks he’s got something but all he sees is the outside of me, he hasn’t even peeped inside, where the real game is.”

Continuing an ongoing theme, Slam feels underestimated and disrespected when people don’t see the real him, although he makes it hard for people to see the real him. In this case, Coach Nipper has Nick, the strongest player on Latimer besides Slam, challenge Slam to one-on-one, which Slam perceives as Nipper trying to undercut him and get back at him for his bad attitude.

“‘Then she found the pipe,’ Carl said. ‘Or maybe the pipe found her. Anyway, they still together.’”

While in Carl’s Curio Shop, Slam sees a woman trying to sell some random items for a dollar, but Slam notices a faraway, glassy look in her eyes. In this quote, Carl confirms that she’s a crack addict and suggests that the crack pipe has its ways of finding anyone in their neighborhood, representing a constant threat and something Slam wants desperately to stay away from.

“‘You got to be better than good, and you got to be hungry all the time,’ Stith said. ‘If you think about anything else than getting the ball and winning the game you gone.’”

While playing at the local YMCA, Slam sees Kenny Stith, a local guy who is very good at basketball and whose uncle once played for the New York Knicks. This is a wake-up call for Slam: Everyone in the NBA is good, and just being good isn’t enough to make it. Slam has to want it more than anything.

“They went onto the next court and started their own hoop dreams. I watched them through the fence until I had calmed down enough to feel the cold again. The brief high had worn off.”

Playing outside at a local court in his neighborhood, Slam sees two young boys who ask him to dunk. Slam fails his first attempt but feels he has to prove something to these kids, and after he slams the second time, the kids go off, excitedly chattering about him. These boys likely remind Slam of himself when he was younger, but Slam also wonders why he feels like he has to prove something. After the high of the dunk wears off, what remains?

“People telling you that this ain’t about manhood and that ain’t about manhood and you end up trying to figure out what you got that is about manhood.”

Slam’s father feels like his masculinity is being challenged when Slam’s mom wants to have another man tutor Slam in math, and while Slam acknowledges that math tutoring has nothing to do with masculinity, this quote reveals that part of Sam’s coming of age is trying to figure out what it means to be a man, to be masculine, a difficult thing for a teenage boy.

“For a while I thought something was following me, but when I turned around there wasn’t nothing there. Still I couldn’t shake the feeling and kept looking over my shoulder. Maybe it was the way that people turned into shadows as it got darker or maybe it was just the wind at my back, blowing through the hood like it owned it, making things colder, reminding me that it owned the streets.”

After seeing two men approach Ice looking for drugs, Slam has a bad feeling in his gut, though Ice denies having any drugs to give them. While heading home, Slam feels like something’s following him, that there’s this thing that owns the streets, and it’s clear that the thing Slam is feeling is the darkness of the neighborhood, the way the neighborhood can eat someone up and make them disappear, leaving nothing but an empty shell, trying to be hard or looking for drugs.

“‘You’re one of these people who thinks the world owes you a living. Nobody owes you so much you can go around pushing people around.’”

After the fight between Slam, Nick, Jimmy, and Ducky, Nick calls out Slam’s selfish attitude. This is a constant theme in the novel: Slam’s attitude and demeanor being the cause of problems because he’s always on the defensive.

“‘You scared of math?’ she said. ‘I mean, like when you go to sleep at night you got to put your math book out the room and lock the door so it won’t get you?’”

Mtisha is helping Slam with his math, trying to get him to a place where he can pass the class, but Slam won’t meet her halfway—he won’t put in the work, he won’t try, mostly because he’s scared of the challenge or of being bad at something. Mtisha wants to help him, but she needs him to want to try; otherwise, it’s a waste of her time. The idea behind this quote comes up again later in the chapter, when Slam, trying to make Ducky feel better about basketball, asks him if he’s scared of the ball and puts it out of his room at night. Slam seems to understand the silliness of the idea, so now he just needs to start putting in the work.

“When you think you going to lose you might as well pack up the game bags and get on the bus.”

In the moment, this quote is about Slam’s attitude going up against Brothers during the Trinity game, as Brothers is the best player he’s faced all season and is backing up his smack talk with a good game. Of course, Slam’s quote here is referring to having a winning attitude whenever he’s on the court—he has to think he’s the best—but this could just as easily apply to life for Slam: If he thinks he’s going to struggle with something before he tries it, he may as well not try.

“One time he said he thought buzzards was circling over his head waiting for him to get weak enough to fall. When he first was saying it I didn’t like it because I thought maybe he was seeing things but now I was seventeen I was beginning to understand what he was talking about.”

Slam recalls this quote his dad said when he was younger, and now that Slam is older, he understands what his dad meant about the circling buzzards: Life in their neighborhood—and generally, life as a Black man—is just waiting for you to get weak enough where it can pounce on you, pick away at what’s left you, and leave you to rot. Having grown up and seen what the world can do to people, Slam now gets this. He’s starting to understand the world.

“I watched Willie walk through a crowd of kids. Being good on the court hadn’t helped him at all. The wind seemed to pick up a little and I pulled my coat shut against the cold and pushed my mind away from Willie.”

Looking for Ice, Slam meets Willie King, who is older than them and was a great player before he got busted for drugs and went to jail, where he was sexually assaulted. Slam realizes that simply being good at basketball isn’t enough to keep you off the streets, and it’s significant that while thinking this, Slam feels the cold wind blowing, much like the cold wind following him when he first truly began to sense Ice was dealing.

“Me and Ice were edging in on a truth and we both knew it. That was what he was really saying when he said he loved me and when we hugged.”

At this point, without explicitly seeing it with his own eyes, Slam is pretty confident Ice is dealing drugs. The truth they’re “edging in on” here is a reference to the different paths the friends are taking—Slam with basketball, Ice with drugs—and in some ways the hug feels like they’re saying goodbye to their childhood friendship.

“‘What do you want?’ Goldy asked. ‘You want fair? How come a kid as streetwise as you seem to be is so naïve when it comes to real life?’” 

After being taken out of the starting lineup, Slam storms away from the team and refuses to play, and Coach Goldstein talks to him in the locker to try to help him. The lesson here for Slam, that he’s having a hard time learning, is that life isn’t fair, and instead of letting it dictate how he plays—or if he plays—he needs to just give it all for himself, to do the best he can for his own benefit.

“‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ Goldy finished up his soup and took mine. ‘The only difference between on the court and off the court is that everybody is in the game off the court. You will play, and you will win or lose. There’s nobody on the bench, nobody sitting it out. You’re in the game, Slam. You’re in it whether you want to be or not. A lot of people fool themselves and say they’re just not going to play. Believe me, it don’t work that way.’” 

After getting into an argument with Mr. Parrish, Slam storms out of school, and Coach Goldstein finds him at a nearby diner, where he gives Slam arguably the most important piece of advice yet: Everyone is playing the game of life, whether they like it or not, and Slam’s participation in the game isn’t limited to being on the court during a basketball game. The game of life continues even when Slam steps off the court, and he has to figure out how to be successful, how to win.

“‘You hear all of the lectures when you’re young.’ She was putting labels on some new tapes. ‘When you get older you realize how many of them were really a lot more important than you knew.’” 

Miss Fowell, the school librarian, gives Slam some advice on how to deal with Mr. Parrish and the other teachers at Latimer. When Slam wonders why everyone is always trying to lecture him, Miss Fowell notes that young people hear lectures all the time but don’t always know how or in what ways to apply the lessons from those lectures. She’s trying to get Slam to take these lessons to heart now so that he doesn’t look back one day and regret not learning sooner.

“When I turned back Ice was looking away. It was like he had tried me and now was going someplace else.”

During the Latimer-Carver game, Slam and Ice go head-to-head in a physical, hard-fought game. By the second half, Slam has begun wearing down Ice with his energy and strong play. Ice “going someplace else” seems to be the moment Slam feels himself surpassing Ice.

“Ice held out his hand to her and opened it, palm up. I saw two plastic vials, the kind I had seen a hundred times in the gutter, in the park, in the bathrooms in school, everywhere in my life.”

At Ice’s party after the game, Slam finally witnesses first-hand Ice dealing drugs, which is a heartbreaking moment for him. After spending a lifetime seeing these drugs and what they do to people, Slam feels betrayed that his oldest friend has fallen prey to a life of drugs.

“I turned back to where Ice stood. He looked at me and I could see the anger in his face. I had peeped him. I had peeped him and it had messed with him good.”

After their fight is broken up, Slam can see the anger on Ice’s face. For the first time, Slam can really see who Ice is, and the anger in Ice’s face is there because he’s being seen, truly, for the first time.

“As far as I was concerned that’s what Ice was, one of Harlem’s dead. Even with his beeper which let him know who was trying to contact him, and his wheels which let him style around, he was in a kind of grave.”

Slam remembers a Malcolm X quote about “fishing for the dead” on the corners of Harlem, and Slam feels that’s exactly what Ice has become now: just one of the many living dead, hustling in the streets and dealing drugs. Even though he’s got his fancy clothes and cars, he’s stuck in a vicious cycle that is its own kind of grave.